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Give me Liminals. Sucks to your Neverborn.
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May 15, 2014 23:41
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Ferrinus posted:Things need to be justified when they're actually contradictory or harmful to the project as a whole, not when they're some combination of underused and poorly implemented as the neverborn were. Abyssals are hard-coded to have authority figures in their lives. Having made that design choice, the decision to have those ultimate authority figures be personality-less non-entities is a decision that needs to be justified and, frankly, revisited. Like, I'm not super-happy that "You're kind of evil and have a Titanic rear end in a top hat for a boss" is a defining feature of two separate Exalted splats, but if that choice gets made for us, the writers owe it to us to at least make it interesting. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 00:21 on May 16, 2014 |
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May 16, 2014 00:18
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What I learned from exalted is that if you have a boss of any kind and are naturally part of a larger organization you are either a communist or evil. The Realm? Evil. Sidereals/Heaven evil. Infernals? Evil. Abyssal? Evil. The only exceptiojln to the evil of organization is glorious autochton, where you listen to what the people and the state need, and become Heroes of the common folk.
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May 16, 2014 01:34
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Punting posted:On the subject of Abyssals, perhaps they would be better served by swapping out the hard control of Resonance with something a little softer and slower-paced, like the Disquiet/Torment systems from Promethean? I really like this idea. It achieves the thematic goals while being far more interesting in play. It also helps reinforce the notion that the Neverborn are really not all that coherent. The best they can muster is trying to make everything else as miserable as they are through the few outlets they have.
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May 16, 2014 03:36
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KittyEmpress posted:What I learned from exalted is that if you have a boss of any kind and are naturally part of a larger organization you are either a communist or evil. The Realm? Evil. Sidereals/Heaven evil. Infernals? Evil. Abyssal? Evil.
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May 16, 2014 04:44
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Autochthon and Gaia are much alike in that their inhabitants need all that they provide, but they still have myriad thoughtless ways to kill you, from lightning to boiling to drowning. Not that they'd even notice that they did. A Spirit or a Yozi can at least remember your name. 
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May 16, 2014 04:56
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Another Draculas Double Feature player here to cast their vote in the 'playing an Abyssal is rad' camp. Just from my experience with the game, Mistaya's earlier comment about infrastructure is spot-on, since it lets us make up stupid poo poo like the Underworld Police Service (UnterPol!), because, y'know, why wouldn't Stygia have one of those, and why wouldn't the Deathlords name it like it had jurisdiction over all the dead? (UnterPol, in turn, lets me play Dracu-cop, which is all kinds of fun.) Plus, with a known organization behind the deathknights, it means we can feasibly retcon reasons PCs might have met in the past, and so forth. I also kind of twitched a little when I read this... KittyEmpress posted:The one big useful thing abyssals did was do something with their lunar bond that wasn't boring straight dice adding. I liked the fluff of their lunar mates actively letting them oppose the masters. Too bad that would involve running the two worst splats!!! ...because I seem to be in the minority in looking at the Lunars 2e core charmlist and being charmed (haha) by a lot of what I see! There is a Charm, at the base of the concealment tree, that lets you conceal absolutely anything with five minutes and a Wits + (appropriate skill) roll. My Lunar is currently wearing an armed bear trap around his neck as a pendant, Flavor Flav style. The first person who punches him in the torso is taking a bear trap to the arm. There's a Charm in the same tree that lets you stuff objects into hammerspace, and if you release the mote commitment, they just fall on the ground at your side. This, I realized, lets me speed-deploy armed bear traps. (I may have a problem regarding bear traps.) When confronted with a horrible doom-squid, my character activated Twin-Faced Hero and Hybrid Body Mutation to turn into a squid woman and bat her eyelashes (pheromones) at it, Tex Avery style. The point I guess I'm groping at, rather poorly, is that a lot of Lunar stuff intended to emulate Loki, Anansi, etc. works quite well - it hardly seems like a splat not worth playing, as your post might imply.
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May 16, 2014 05:44
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vdate posted:...because I seem to be in the minority in looking at the Lunars 2e core charmlist and being charmed (haha) by a lot of what I see!
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May 16, 2014 06:01
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Punting posted:On the subject of Abyssals, perhaps they would be better served by swapping out the hard control of Resonance with something a little softer and slower-paced, like the Disquiet/Torment systems from Promethean? So you basically want Doom of the Black Exaltation but updated.
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May 16, 2014 18:07
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Nessus posted:I don't know. An Elder Lunar who eats Abyssals would be such a loving good NPC boss. Also 3E should let Abyssals be more Dio-like. Seriously I made a build to be as Part 1 Dio as possible but while I got the eyebeams and the freezing thing (somewhat), I want some charms that let me summon THE WORLD.
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May 16, 2014 22:54
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ErichZahn posted:So you basically want Doom of the Black Exaltation but updated. I had to go look what that was, but yeah, basically.
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May 17, 2014 01:46
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KittyEmpress posted:What I learned from exalted is that if you have a boss of any kind and are naturally part of a larger organization you are either a communist or evil. The Realm? Evil. Sidereals/Heaven evil. Infernals? Evil. Abyssal? Evil. That's on purpose, Geoff Grabowski used to call himself an "alternative conservative" but basically is just a libertarian. I think that poo poo is real boring politically, but I don't get the big bucks to write Exalted setting.
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May 17, 2014 15:50
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Mexcillent posted:That's on purpose, Geoff Grabowski used to call himself an "alternative conservative" but basically is just a libertarian. Haha wait really? That is amazing. I just said it as a joke because someone brought up that Infernals and abyssal share 'you are evil and have jerks for bosses' as a theme.
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May 17, 2014 16:56
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the Guild is capitalistic as hell but they are an evil organization too because they are literal opium dealers
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May 17, 2014 17:22
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:the Guild is capitalistic as hell but they are an evil organization too because they are literal opium dealers And the Congo Free State in the East, and the East India Company in the West, and Southern US/Caribbean slave-traders worldwide, and a Renaissance Italy usurer's collective in the Scavenger Lands, and Enron and AIG and Goldman-Sachs and agribusiness-tyrants and robber-barons and pretty much every single person on Matt Taibbi's shitlist...
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May 17, 2014 17:28
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So basically they are the kind of corporation that would really work well on a Libertarian world.
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May 17, 2014 17:33
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Mexcillent posted:That's on purpose, Geoff Grabowski used to call himself an "alternative conservative" but basically is just a libertarian. Huh, I always viewed Exalted as being anti-libertarian. The Great Prophecy lays out how Galt's Gulch taking charge of the world set everything on a course to hell and how trying to address their failings had a high chance of triggering an even worse Armageddon. Also aren't Autochthon's city-states more like nationalist and fascist regimes with power residing in the elite ruling classes of the Tripartite and the various craftsmen guilds while all the workers basically have no say in how things are run? I didn't pay as close attention as I should have when a friend was statting out Jade Caste Karl Marx beside me while I tinkered with my Soulsteel Noir Detective, but I got the impression Autochthon has social class disparity, rich oligarchies and so on straight out of the USSR.
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May 17, 2014 17:42
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Calde posted:Huh, I always viewed Exalted as being anti-libertarian. The Great Prophecy lays out how Galt's Gulch taking charge of the world set everything on a course to hell and how trying to address their failings had a high chance of triggering an even worse Armageddon. Think more Fountainhead. The Solars were rulers due to personal success and excellence. The masses - the Dragon-blooded and their Sidereal puppetmasters - feared and were jealous of them, and couldn't abide them for that reason. It's a story of the successful and hard-working, time and time again, being cast down by the jealous masses. At least, if I were going to call Exalted libertarian, that's the explanation I would use. That and how exceptional people consistently end up with power and success - always rightful, never merely lucky, except in the cases of nepotism - and lead people as their betters. Personally, I don't agree with that sentiment about the game line. There are plenty of counter-examples, of power corrupting, of teamwork being good and rewarded, and so forth. But that's the example I would use for how the setting could reflect Ayn Rand-style libertarianism.
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May 17, 2014 17:56
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Sometimes a game where you play as a sun god and friends is a game where you play as a sun god and friends. Maybe don't try to go all SuperMechaGodzilla on it, for christ's sake.
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May 17, 2014 18:03
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It's true: you're either communist, or evil. Choose wisely.
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May 17, 2014 18:04
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Sometimes a game where you play as a sun god and friends is a game where you play as a sun god and friends. Maybe don't try to go all SuperMechaGodzilla on it, for christ's sake. Yeah, but there's reading weird political subtext into a work and displacing the fun by overanalyzing everything, and there's having to read weird political subtext out of a work so you can put the fun back, and if what Mexcillent says is true then I'm pretty sure this is more the latter than the former.
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May 17, 2014 18:08
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Sometimes a game where you play as a sun god and friends is a game where you play as a sun god and friends. Maybe don't try to go all SuperMechaGodzilla on it, for christ's sake. I mean, any story of exceptional heroes striking out on their own because they have the might to back up the possibility that they're right can be pretty quickly repurposed into a libertarian success story. Which is probably why there are relatively high-profile examples of comic book writers tending towards that ideology (hi Steve Ditko), and why superheroes are typically a celebration of libertarianism, fascism, or somehow-both. And Exalted's not any different.
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May 17, 2014 18:25
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:No you're right, there's no place for analysis. Let's go back to speculating about charmsets or rehashing which Infernals chapters you should probably skip v. which ones you should definitely skip. I'd rather have that than read paragraphs or what party would Ma-Ha-Suchi would vote for or who in creation is the closest to Hitler.
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May 17, 2014 18:32
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That's an easy one: you are.
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May 17, 2014 18:41
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Chejop Kejak did nothing wrong. Solar's fear the Dragon Blooded, ect, ect.
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May 17, 2014 18:43
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I'm actually not sure what Geoff's politics are, but he's not a libertarian. He seems to distrust power in everyone equally, including both lone Great Man-types and individuality-stifling large organizations.
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May 17, 2014 19:55
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Calde posted:Huh, I always viewed Exalted as being anti-libertarian. The Great Prophecy lays out how Galt's Gulch taking charge of the world set everything on a course to hell and how trying to address their failings had a high chance of triggering an even worse Armageddon. Exalted does have the sort of disquieting premise that there are superhuman individuals in the setting, and that it isn't like they are mysteriously held in check, except by some elements of the logistics of Exaltation. An Exalt is more capable than a human in dozens of ways, and even ("even") a Dragon-blooded administrator is hugely more able than a mortal. However, this in no way guarantees they would be more moral, just, or far-sighted - they might very efficiently mobilize your fleabag kingdom for total war and get all of them killed, rather than collecting a couple dozen levies off the rye field and marching off to war. So I think that balances out the authoritarian implications of having "better at doing things" people, while also making it so it is possible to play a returning Solar king or aspiring DB emperor without it being required that you are a total bag of dicks.
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May 17, 2014 20:26
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Either way, discussions of Exalted's themes and politics are cool. Unfortunately, people often mistakenly believe themselves to be discussing Exalted's themes and politics when they are in fact just telling you which in-game faction's aesthetics they most prefer.
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May 17, 2014 20:28
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Calde posted:Also aren't Autochthon's city-states more like nationalist and fascist regimes with power residing in the elite ruling classes of the Tripartite and the various craftsmen guilds while all the workers basically have no say in how things are run? I didn't pay as close attention as I should have when a friend was statting out Jade Caste Karl Marx beside me while I tinkered with my Soulsteel Noir Detective, but I got the impression Autochthon has social class disparity, rich oligarchies and so on straight out of the USSR. Autochthonia is a late capitalist society examined through a Marxist lens. You're right in noticing that the workers do not own the means of production, production is not done for human need, and their society certainly isn't classless - but you'll note that while the Tripartite are comparatively well-off they do not, themselves, own capital. In a setting like this there's a danger in having an overt capitalist class that one can just point adventuring parties at and say "kill these guys and let the rest sort itself out". Alchemicals has done something rather clever by abstracting the capitalist class almost entirely. While they may be worked by humans, the means of production are owned by Autochthon, the globalized and impersonal economic system that defines the lives of late capitalist workers. (You get a hint to this with the Alchemicals themselves, since Exalted tend to become more like their patrons as they increase in Essence; Solars become god-kings, Infernals become Primordials, etc. Alchemicals begin as men, become materiel, and end up as economic systems!) The Autochthonians are trapped, as Marx predicted, by the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The great engine of Capital they labor in runs on profit (allegorized as Essence and the Five Magical Materials), cannot survive without it, and is increasingly incapable of finding new sources of it. Worse, with the emptying of the Ewer of Souls, they've run into the contradiction of population growth where capitalism demands new workers but industrialized societies see their population rate drop to equilibrium or lower (as seen currently in Japan). The tragedy of Autochthon is that, hardy prole that He is, He is an excellent inventor and producer but a bit naive. He went to sleep, turning his carefully planned economic system-self into a laissez-faire machine, because He believed that if each individual part was well-designed (and they were) and was dedicated to their own continued functioning (and they are), then the emergent whole would also be well-designed and continue functioning. This, alas, is the fallacy of the free marketeer. As the rate of profit drops, individual parts begin looking for other stores of value to survive on and gremlinize; they cannibalize pension funds and vital infrastructure with little regard for the long-term health of the society. Eventually the rate of profit drops to nothing, the veins of vital Essence run dry, and there are no more functioning repair systems. Autochthon dies, along with all within him. Fortunately, the workers of Autochthonia have the Alchemicals, heroes of the vanguard! They can if they're brave enough forge their way through the Reaches, overcoming gremlins, class traitors, and the dangers of the environment as an allegory for political revolution until they reach the Elemental Pole of Crystal. To claim the Core is to quite literally "seize control of the means of production", and to waken Autochthon and begin setting things right is to create a planned economy dedicated to human flourishing. Alternatively, they can follow the bourgeois Tripartite and begin the Locust Crusade: a grim vision where Capital sustains itself through imperialism and a constantly expanding resource sphere, that can only end with Autochthon swallowing the Wyld and condemning all that was or ever will be to Oblivion.
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May 17, 2014 22:45
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In general, a continuing theme in Exalted is that political will is of greater importance than personal or technological power, and also of greater importance than, like, bureaucratic and logistical efficiency. An unjust, exploitative, and destructive system will just be more powerfully and efficiently exploitative if you level up its leaders and infrastructure without changing its actual goals.
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May 18, 2014 01:24
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Dammit Who? posted:Autochthonia is a late capitalist society examined through a Marxist lens. This may be the best forum post ever made about Alchemicals. I endorse this message.
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May 18, 2014 01:35
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Close the thread there's nothing left worth saying after that.
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May 18, 2014 03:39
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There is a class with spiders for bones actually, plenty of discussion left.
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May 18, 2014 04:42
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So who in Exalted is closest to a fedora libertarian?
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May 18, 2014 05:17
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You mean a spoiled brat with massive privilege who thinks he's owed stuff and has creepy views on how to treat others? To one extent or another, everyone, sadly.
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May 18, 2014 05:20
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Ettin posted:So who in Exalted is closest to a fedora libertarian? 
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May 18, 2014 05:20
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That is an amazing post, thanks Damnit Who. Autochthonia being described as communist is a pet-peeve for a friend of mine, so I had heard similar arguments, but I'm in no way well-versed enough in the subject matter to break it down like that.
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May 18, 2014 05:30
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Dammit Who? posted:Autochthonia is a late capitalist society examined through a Marxist lens. You're right in noticing that the workers do not own the means of production, production is not done for human need, and their society certainly isn't classless - but you'll note that while the Tripartite are comparatively well-off they do not, themselves, own capital. In a setting like this there's a danger in having an overt capitalist class that one can just point adventuring parties at and say "kill these guys and let the rest sort itself out". Alchemicals has done something rather clever by abstracting the capitalist class almost entirely. While they may be worked by humans, the means of production are owned by Autochthon, the globalized and impersonal economic system that defines the lives of late capitalist workers. This reading makes the mistake of assuming that woken Autocthon's (The State's) judgement and foresight are perfect. It ignores the fact that the implementation of any plan of that scale necessitates the violent suppression of dissent. All power, state or corporate, should be met with suspicion - don't forget the Chapter 5 comic, featuring your hero of the vanguard gassing protestors! The fact that this movement of the workers (the speaker bears a flaming wrench) and the common man (all genders) is violently suppressed gives lie to the fact that the state is not our friend. As with all structures of power, the state's number one priority is its own survival - when push comes to shove, the state's agents are the enemy of the common man. It's very revealing that the "vanguard" - and I'm assuming anyone who performs this reading would consider themselves a part of the vanguard - identifies itself as literally superhuman. Underlying that identification is a serious contempt for the common man. When we continue with the reading of Autocthon-as-State, we find that Autocthonia (The Nation-State) is founded on violence perpetrated by a self-declared elite - the "vanguard" of Autocthon's heroes: "Autochthon summoned eight of his greatest mortal adherents — Claslat, Estasia, Gulak, Jarish, Kamak, Nurad, Sova and Yugash. The Great Maker’s Divine Ministers and their holy subroutines presented the mortal heroes with potent blessings and powerful weapons and tools, and gave them a mission. They were to spread out to the edges of Creation and beyond in utmost secrecy, gathering the components to craft a mighty artifact, and thence to carry it to the Well of Souls to fill it with 100 million human souls drawn directly from that font of limitless power. This they did, avoiding the notice of the Celestial Exalted and their loyal Dragon-Blooded, though it took 10 years. At last, the Great Maker was ready to take himself off into exile. Some few thousand of his most devoted worshippers gathered to follow their beloved Autochthon, and these he took solemnly into his body. Then, moving with terrifying speed, he snatched tens of thousands of additional mortals from the surrounding countryside as well." The urge to constitute a state summons the vanguard, who equip themselves with weapons and carry out a secret plan - that is, a plan lacking the informed consent of the people - to create a "mighty artifact": The Nation-State. They avoid the notice of the Celestial Exalted and their loyal Dragon-Blooded - you don't even need to render this as an allegory because it's literally just feudalism - but, as usual, the wishes of the common man are ignored and they're swept into Autocthonia on a wave of state violence. It's no mistake that Alchemicals become military equipment before they form small nation-states - they're absolutely their patron in miniature. All the points you made about gremlinisation and capitalism sound pretty right, but I don't agree that the solution is to wake Autocthon and cede absolute power to the state. Autocthon's sickness is an intrinsic part of his being - it's an allegory for capitalism's dependence on the state (See here - 24:18 to 26:00 and 28:06 to 28:24, but the whole thing's worth watching). His illness can never be cured - only held at bay with the promise of limitless growth (Exposure to the Wyld). Project Razor is an escape from the State-Capitalism complex. Don't try and fix Autocthon, because you can't - just get out of there. Edit: When we continue with the reading of the Ewer of Souls as the heart of the nation-state, we can take its steady decline as an argument that all states will inevitably collapse. It's also interesting that the eight members of the Autocthonian vanguard pretty much immediately split into tribes named after themselves - Gulak, Sova, Nurad, Trotsky, Lenin. Bigup DJ fucked around with this message at 05:54 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 05:35
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Here is a place where you can pay lots of money to make me tell Rich Thomas to put the name "Poopsucker" in the EX3 core, and also I guess you would get a fancy leatherette-bound version of said book (plus some extra stuff).
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May 18, 2014 05:48
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Kinda curious on why you waited until today to do so, Plague. Also why you pledged that much?
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May 18, 2014 06:01
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